


Tea on a Summer Day

by Lady_Slytherin



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Childhood Friends, Drinking Tea, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 00:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6098875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Slytherin/pseuds/Lady_Slytherin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>Lovely Little Femslash Day Three: Childhood Friends</strong><br/>When they’re seven, Ursula and Hero drink tea and slay dragons. When they’re older, there’s more difficult things that need conquering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea on a Summer Day

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as usual to @megwinter for betaing.

Ursula sips water out of a tea cup with her finger pointed outward. She is seven years old, and this is the first time she’s been at Hero’s house. She wants to talk but doesn’t know what to say, so instead she gives a tiny smile, which is returned immediately. 

“I love drinking tea,” Hero says. “Only when it’s pretend though, I don’t like real tea.”

Ursula smiles again, showing the gap where she’s lost one of her front teeth. “It makes me feel like a princess,” she says. She’s always loved fairytales because she knows that no matter how bad things get in the middle, they’ll have a happy ending. 

Hero claps her hands with delight. “I’ve got a lovely idea! Let’s play pretend! You can be a princess trapped in a tower and I’ll be the knight that rescues you.”

Later, Hero’s mums will find them draped in curtains slaying a dragon, and they’ll laugh and take pictures. After that Ursula will go home, and her mother will ask if she had a good time, and Ursula will tell her, “I want to play at Hero’s house every day.”

*

Ursula flips through the pages of a magazine and tries not to think. She’s supposed to be picking out pictures for a collage, but she keeps getting distracted by the thing she knows she’s going to tell Hero today. She’s fourteen years old, and this will be the first time she’s said the words out loud.

“Milk and sugar?” Hero asks, taking the kettle off the stove. 

“Yes, please,” Ursula says. She still hasn’t gotten used to tea without milk. She doesn’t like it much with milk either, but Hero always has that smile on her face when she offers it and there’s no way to say no. 

When the tea has cooled down enough, they carry it into Hero’s bedroom to work on their project. The sit on the floor and carefully cut out images, laying them out neatly so they can see what they’ve already done. 

Ursula can’t focus on the collage or her tea. All she sees when she looks at Hero is her hands. She and Balthazar have talked a lot about the hands they want to hold, but she’s never told him whose hands it is she’s talking about. Eventually, Ursula manages to cut some pictures out of the magazine. The scissors keep moving wrong, cutting into the wrong part of the page as though outside of her control.

_Just breathe,_ Ursula orders herself. Everything will be okay if she can just keep breathing long enough to get the right words out of her mouth. The pictures blur before her eyes, and she has to force herself to pick one out and put it in place on the collage. _It’s Hero, if there’s anyone it’s safe to tell it’s her._

Her tea has been cast aside. She sits very still, the way she always does when she’s nervous, and all of a sudden Hero’s staring at her with those big, concerned eyes.

“Is everything all right?” Hero askes. 

The picture in her hands is one from a sports magazine, with a man jumping off a cliff on the front. Ursula can relate. “Actually, there’s something I have to tell you. I’m—I’m gay.” Her voice shakes, and she feels like she might cry, even though that’s silly. Hero came out as trans when she was quite young, so it’s not like she would ever be inconsiderate towards another person coming out.

Hero smiles. “That’s wonderful, Ursula! I’m so glad you know yourself well enough to have that figured out.” Her tone is calm, but she puts her hand on Ursula’s and squeezes, like she knows how hard this was to say. 

Ursula exhales shakily and forces herself to smile. 

“You know, if you’d like to talk to anyone about it, I’m sure Mum and Mumma would be happy to answer your questions. I’ve been thinking I might be bisexual lately and they’ve been so helpful.” Hero glues down another pictures and looks at their project critically. “Do you think it needs more glitter?”

Ursula examines it carefully. “Actually, I think it’s perfect how it is.”

She knows how the rest of the afternoon will go. They’ll talk, and neither will say anything important but it’ll be okay because they’re together. They’ll drink more tea, then watch Call the Midwife, and they won’t hold hands, and when Ursula goes home her mother will ask her if she had a nice time and she’ll say, “I think so.”

*

It’s the summer after Year Twelve that Ursula finally gets to kiss Hero.

They’re in Ursula’s back garden drinking tea. Hero’s is pomegranate, and Ursula’s is mint. School has finally ended so they’re both acting silly, pretending to be posh British ladies of the 1800s even though they’re drinking out of cartoon character mugs.

“Do you think we’re too old for this?” Hero asks suddenly.

“Of course not.”

Hero frowns. “Claudio thought so. He’d always make some sort of comment about how _young_ I am when I acted like this.”

“Claudio doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Ursula says, feeling as though if Claudio were there she might well hit him. Not that she condones punching people, but it isn’t right, all the ways he’d found to hurt Hero. If only Ursula could have done something to stop it happening.

“No, I suppose not,” Hero says thoughtfully. “Still, he _was_ my first love.”

“Do you ever wish he wasn’t?” Ursula asks, because Hero deserved a first love who treated her well and takes care of her and sometimes it physically hurts that she didn’t get that.”

Hero tips her head to the side. “No,” she says after a moment. “I don’t really want to regret parts of my life. Even the parts that were hard have helped make me who I am now. Mostly, I’d just like to move on to better things.”

Ursula sips her tea to avoid having to say anything. How can Hero be so nice, after everything she’s been through? Why isn’t she angry? Ursula’s furious, and Claudio didn’t even hurt her, or at least not directly.

“Have you ever been in love?” Hero asks.

The word slips out of Ursula’s mouth before she can think to stop it. “Yes.”

Hero’s eyes widen. She does a good job of hiding it, but Ursula’s known her too long not to notice. “Who was it?” she asks. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

The world condenses itself down to the fraction of a second she has to make this choice. Ursula’s always hated lying, always hated when people she cares about shy away from the truth as though it will hurt them. This means that there’s only one right answer to Hero’s question. She tugs lightly at a blade of grass, and opens her mouth to answer. 

But the words stick in her throat.

“Ursula?” Hero says. She scoots closer to her as though concerned. “I’m sorry, was that too personal? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

But she does want to. It’s just that her mouth won’t open, and her mind keeps flashing forward unhelpfully to things this could change. The world tilts dangerously, but Ursula opens her mouth and says, “You.” And then it’s over and the world is still again and she can see all of it, the garden and the tea and Hero’s eyes, widening past the point she’s able to hide.

“Oh,” Hero says softly. She doesn’t look away.

That’s it, then. The words are out there, and Hero doesn’t feel the same way, and that’s all there is to it. Ursula tries to distract herself by taking a sip of tea, but all that’s left is the sediment at the bottle of the mug. 

“Ursula, please look at me,” Hero says suddenly. “I just need a minute to process.”

“It’s okay, Hero. I wasn’t expecting you to say it back.” She also hadn’t expected it to hurt this much, but she doesn’t say this.

“You love me?”

“Yes.”

And then, suddenly, Hero grins. “That’s wonderful!” she says. “I’ve liked you for ages, but I never thought—you never seemed interested, so I assumed you weren’t, and eventually I let go of it.”

Ursula looks down, feeling stupid. She’s missed her shot, then. Hero liked her once, but now it’s too late. She should have said something earlier, before Year Twelve and Claudio and all of the things she couldn’t save Hero from.

“I think we should try it,” Hero says. Ursula stares at her, not understanding. “Dating, I mean. I was thinking the other day that I should probably put myself out there again, but nobody really seemed worth risking getting hurt over. But I’ve liked you for ages, and if you like me too—you know, I think we could really do this.”

“Do you mean it?” Ursula asks, face breaking into a smile. _She likes me,_ she tells herself. She wonders if repeating the words enough times will help her believe them. A warm feeling settles over her body, like the first sip of tea on a cold day.

Hero grins back. “I really, really do. Can I kiss you?”

Ursula nods, unable to form words. Hero leans in slowly, as though giving her permission to pull away if this isn’t what she wants.

She doesn’t pull away. Instead she leans forward, capturing Hero’s lips with her own. Hero tastes like pomegranate. Their hands find each other, and it’s like the words to every love song Ursula’s ever rolled her eyes at. When they separate Ursula stares into Hero’s eyes, and knows in the core of her being that this time, her mother won’t be asking if she’s had a good time. She’ll be able to see it in Ursula’s face.


End file.
